Beautiful women

Beautiful women are fun to watch. Read it again. Beautiful women are fun to watch.

Before you comment “hell yeah!” from your frat house or run to sharpen your pitchforks to teach another chauvinist pig a lesson, take a breath, sit down and pour yourself a beer. Bear with me.

On this beautiful Saturday, my wonderful wife and I watched a college football game when she asked a question, “Why is it that in football the sideline commentators are always young, attractive women?”

“Why is it that weather people are always attractive women?” I said.

She scrunched her nose. “There are some ass-ugly weather people.” Her face grew more intense. “Seriously. The studio guys are guys. Why not just have more guys? It’s always a tall blonde.”

“Well, they’re fun to look at,” I said.

Common wisdom holds that more guys than gals watch football. Most guys like women. Ergo, guys appreciate watching women as a side dish to their football. The flow of money to the NCAAF and the NFL seems to support this reasoning.

Upon further reflection, a different question seems more important, though: why are there no women in the studio?

“Well,” you might say, “women don’t play football.”

By that you will mean to say that women don’t play football in college and the NFL. That’s true. There are no aging female meatheads with college football or NFL playing experience. Is being a former player a prerequisite for sitting in a studio and getting paid for talking about the game?

Let’s see. We’ll take NBC and their Notre Dame crew. Three guys nattered on mercilessly: Dan Hicks, Liam McHugh and Jonathan Vilma. Of the three, only Vilma played football in college (and the pros). Hicks and McHugh were journalism majors, and I’m not sure if either ever tackled anything more than a BLT.

Cast in the role of sideline eye candy was Kathryn Tappen. No, she never played college football, but she did distinguish herself as an All-American in track-and-field while at Rutgers University. According to her NBC bio, “In 2006, Tappen earned an Associated Press award for her sports feature “Swim Meet.” Her sports feature reporting has been nominated for two Boston/New England Emmy Awards by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.”